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A Completely Non-Standardized Podficcing Exam
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Instructor Script: "When filling in the exam, please use a Number #2 pencil. Be sure to fill in the bubble completely and make your marks heavy and dark. If you wish to change an answer, completely erase the mark you made before making a new mark. You have 60 minutes to complete this Completely Non-Standardized Podficcing Exam.”
Question 1: A multivoice podfic has 7 contributors across 4 time zones. Two members disappear because of finals week. Calculate the probability that the project posts before 2028.
A. 99% if before 2028 actually means eventually.
B. High enough to hope. Low enough to suffer.
C. The probability drops by 12% every time someone says “Sorry for disappearing.”
D. 100% if the project starts during Voiceteam.
Question 2: Our Australian cousin Throckmorton records podfic at 190 WPM but spends 4 hours editing out every breath sound. If the final podfic is 28 minutes long, how many times did Throckmorton whisper “fuck” during editing?
A. Depends on how many times Audacity crashed.
B. Enough time for the word to lose all linguistic meaning and become a waveform shape.
C. At least five, plus one “motherfucker.”
D. Approximately once every 3 deleted mouth noises.
Question 3: Kayla opens Audacity intending to normalize one file and accidentally starts a 6 hour editing session at 11:13 PM. If time stops having meaning after midnight, how much time does she end up spending on it emotionally?
A. Emotionally? She never left Audacity. She lives there now.
B. Three business days exactly.
C. Long enough to become mortal enemies with the waveform.
D. Depends on how long it takes her to have a full-blown identity crisis.
Question 4: In a sample size of 500 AO3 fics tagged “Slow Burn,” the average first kiss occurs at 78% completion. Determine the standard deviation of reader suffering.
A. Depends on if it’s also tagged “Mutual Pining.” Standard deviation of both tags together approaches infinity.
B. Impossible to determine because the suffering is expressed by phrases such as “I’m eating drywall.”
C. The suffering graph resembles a staircase made entirely of screaming and cannot be deciphered.
D. Reader suffering remains manageable until the accidental hand touching event triggers exponential escalation.
Question 5: A podfic receives 247 kudos and 3 comments. Using statistical analysis, determine how many times the podficcer rereads those comments and cries.
A. Once before deleting them all in a paranoid frenzy assuming they’re bots.
B. 5 times in the 30 seconds since seeing the AO3 email.
C. 3 times immediately then once every few weeks during unrelated emotional spirals.
D. 12 times publicly, 37 times privately, and once while half-asleep at 3 AM.
Question 6: You are given a challenge on Voiceteam. None of the fics you want to pod for it have blanket permission. Determine the probability of a positive response if you ask each of their authors for their blessing.
A. 90% despite the arguments of your anxiety.
B. 95% unless the author hasn’t been seen since 2017 and now exists only in your imagination.
C. 100% if you sell your soul.
D. The probability becomes undefined once you start rereading your permission request for the 14th time.
Question 7: You track 100 listeners listening to a podfic.
1 leaves a comment immediately
6 leave kudos and disappear into the night
12 compose comments mentally but never post
3 think they leave kudos but actually don't
78 vanish without a word
Determine the survival rate of podficcing society.
A. 100% because podficcers have adapted to survive on a single comment per year.
B. 22% if imagined comments are counted as emotional support particles.
C. 0% because AI is coming for all of us.
D. Depends on podficcer access to community support and caffeine.
Question 8: You have 24 hours in a day. 9 of these are spent at work, and 9 are spent sleeping. If you spend 5.5 hours watching TV, how much time do you have left to record a 50k word podfic?
A. Negative 4 business days.
B. Enough time to record exactly one sentence 39 different ways.
C. A good 20 minutes before you take a break that lasts a good 8 months.
D. Depends on how long it takes for you to take a 30 minute nap.
Question 9: Mist records a 12 minute podfic in 47 takes because her cats keep screaming in the background. If each interruption causes psychic damage equivalent to 3 HP, how much emotional health does she have remaining?
A. Enough HP to say “it’s fine” out loud while visibly dissociating.
B. Impossible to calculate without the additional variable of “unexpected police siren in the background.”
C. Negative 94 HP. She is now editing from beyond the veil.
D. Indeterminable because psychic damage stacks multiplicatively after the 30th take.
Question 10: A listener starts a 5 hour podfic while doing chores. They sit down “just for a minute.” How much time was spent cleaning by the time the podfic is done?
A. The amount of time it took to scrub a single plate.
B. An hour, but somehow that entire hour was spent vacuuming the same rug while wearing headphones.
C. 17 minutes of actual cleaning. 4 hours 43 minutes of sitting on the floor with a container of Lysol wipes and a pair of gloves.
D. The house is spotless. The listener jumped up upon hearing the phrase “Their tongues battled for dominance.”
Instructor Script: "When finished, please bring your scantrons to the front of the classroom and exit quietly. Thank you.”